sees"--I completed the picture--"he luckily tells."

She quite agreed with me that it was lucky, but without prejudice to his
acuteness and to what had been in him moreover a natural revulsion. "He
has seen, in short; there comes some chance when one does. His, as
luckily as you please, came this evening. If you ask me what it showed
him you ask more than _I've_ either cared or had time to ask. Do you
consider, for that matter"--she put it to me--"that one does ask?" As
her high smoothness--such was the wonder of this reascendancy--almost
deprived me of my means, she was wise and gentle with me. "Let us leave
it alone."

I fairly, while my look at her turned rueful, scratched my head. "Don't
you think it a little late for that?"

"Late for everything!" she impatiently said. "But there you are."

I fixed the floor. There indeed I was. But I tried to stay there--just
there only--as short a time as possible. Something, moreover, after all,
caught me up. "But if Brissenden already knew----?"

"If he knew----?" She still gave me, without prejudice to her
ingenuity--and indeed it was a part of this--all the work she could.

"Why, that Long and Lady John were thick?"

"Ah, then," she cried, "you admit they _are_!"

"Am I not admitting everything you tell me? But the more I admit," I
explained, "the more I must understand. It's _to_ admit, you see, that I
inquire. If Briss came down with Lady John yesterday to oblige Mr.
Long----"

"He didn't come," she interrupted, "to oblige Mr. Long!"

"Well, then, to oblige Lady John herself----"

"He didn't come to oblige Lady John herself!"

"Well, then, to oblige his clever wife----"

"He didn't come to oblige his clever wife! He came," said Mrs. Briss,
"just to amuse himself. He _has_ his amusements, and it's odd," she
remarkably laughed, "that you should grudge them to him!"

"It would be odd indeed if I did! But put his proceeding," I continued,
"on any ground you like; you described to me the purpose of it as a
screening of the pair."

"I described to you the purpose of it as nothing of the sort. I didn't
describe to you the purpose of it," said Mrs. Briss, "at all. I
described to you," she triumphantly set forth, "the _effect_ of
it--which is a very different thing."

I could only meet her with admiration. "You're of an astuteness----!"

"Of course I'm of an astuteness! I _see_ effects. And I saw that one.
How much Briss himself had seen it is, as I've told you,